Dark Void Review

by R834, 13th April 2011

Title:Dark VoidUK Release Date:

22nd January 2010

Available For:PC, PS3, Xbox 360Reviewed On:PS3

Set just before World War II, pilot Will Grey is
hired (coincidentally by
ex-girlfriend Ava) to fly some cargo across the Bermuda triangle… but
this will be no ordinary flight. Encountering a violent storm, the plane
is taken down by an unseen flying object, forcing them to crash land in
the mountains, where Will finds himself in the Void - a dimension
between Earth and the home world of the Watchers, a robotic alien race
who are supplying the Axis powers with weapons.

The story itself was reasonable. Guerrillas fighting against an enemy who severely outnumber them is a fairly standard plotline, but serves the game well. However, breaks in the story felt particularly weak. Skipping forward a month and a half with nothing more than a screen saying "six weeks later” seems way too vague for a setting like the Void, where assaults by the enemy seem to be happening near constantly. What happened in those six weeks? Did the Watchers just suddenly let up their attacks?

And this isn't the only instance of glossing over large periods of time. A huge plot hole involving the abduction and subsequent return of two of the game's most important characters is left wide open. It feels like there was a missed opportunity here to mix things up by playing as another character, perhaps adding a more stealth-based section, avoiding their captors during the escape. Instead it's just left to the player's imagination.

There were a few plot twists, and the ending succeeds in being fairly emotional, but didn't really have enough impact, probably due to the fact there is simply not enough time to connect with the characters, as the game is quite short. The closing cutscene does leave the game open for a sequel, although judging by poor sales and mediocre review scores I can't see this happening any time soon. In terms of gameplay, Dark Void borrows heavily from many other games, Uncharted being one of them. On paper, the gameplay should be excellent, but the execution is slightly flawed.

The game’s main feature is clearly the jetpack, and I must say, flying around was great fun and hijacking enemy saucers by throwing out the Watcher pilot feels very rewarding. With the jetpack, there's two modes - one for flying around at ridiculous speed firing at spaceships with shoulder mounted machine guns, and another for hovering above enemies and shooting them with the guns you would on foot.

The trouble is, you don't really hover; the jetpack has to be kept in place by constantly boosting to counter the gravity, which makes for difficult shooting when you have to shoot, re-adjust your aim and continuously tap X to regain height all at the same time. This hovering mode also leaves you horribly exposed, so it's perhaps best just to use this mode to change between jetpacking and fighting on foot, so as to not to break your neck during the landing.

On foot, the game’s cover-and-shoot mechanic works as expected, and the vertical cover sections made for some interesting, and somewhat unique, gameplay. I was very impressed with the quick
time events, especially those used to take down the Archons, but
repetition of these QTEs means the initial wow factor is lessened, and I did feel the melee attack was a little overpowered considering the effect of one or two punches is a lot greater than a clip of bullets, and with to the game’s procedural health recovery, there's no reason not to just run into the enemies and throw your fists at them. The good in this is the melee finisher animations, which include grabbing robots by the face and shooting them in the back. Trouble is, there's not really very many unique animations, and they sometimes don't align properly.

The control scheme is pretty run-of-the-mill stuff, but works well enough, and I don’t remember having any difficulties with it except the previously mentioned hovering troubles.
Graphically, the game looked fairly decent, aided by the fact it is built on the Unreal Engine, but bland environments, slightly off-sync speech animations and poor lighting means Dark Void is far from the best looking. There were some great set pieces, though, such as a section where you were shut in a human transport pod (although this is very similar to Half Life 2), a shoot-out in front of the giant screen and a weapons factory.
Dark Void has an impressive feature-film style soundtrack from Bear McCreary, most notable for his work on Battlestar Galactica, and the game owes a lot to its soundtrack, which both compliments and enhances the gameplay experience, adding suspense and creating a rather effective atmosphere. Voice acting by Nolan North means Will Grey sounds like Nathan Drake and it did feel like a cheap attempt at trying to grab some of that Uncharted magic, especially with the other gameplay elements Dark Void borrows from that particular game, but I like North's voice acting, so no complaints. Other voice actors were less memorable, although good enough.

Would I replay this game? Normally, probably not. After completing the story, there is no sense of a need to replay the game. Tactical trophy placement meant I did replay the game and those interested in trophies will find some replay value, but if you're not into trophies then you're probably only going to be giving Dark Void one playthrough. On the subject of trophies, a severe trophy bug prevented me (and many other players) from unlocking the ‘Grease Monkey’ trophy – unfortunately, one of the most time consuming – and I had to redo the game with a lot of grinding for tech points in order to achieve the platinum. It's a shame because there seems to be no support from Airtight Games regarding the matter, and it appears this won’t ever be patched.

A short campaign, graphical blandness and glitches that should have been picked up and fixed during QA offset against a unique vertical cover system and thrilling jetpack experience to form a decent game that borrows so heavily from others, but isn’t quite the sum of its parts.